SIR GASTON MASPERO. VII 



a new script even when a key has been found necessarily involves 

 "guessing" — and guesses may be right or wrong. It is only by 

 rigid self-criticism and by testing results at every stage in the 

 process of unravelling the mysteries of a script that the correct 

 guess becomes a scientific fact. When Maspero began his career, 

 the " guessing " stage had not yet been passed either in Egyptology 

 or Assyriology ; and though remarkable results had been achieved 

 through scholars like Lepsius, Mariette, Brugsch and Le Page 

 Renouf in Egyptian, and by Hincks, Rawlinson, Norris and Lenor- 

 mant and Oppert in Assyriology, yet the ground was uncertain un- 

 der the feet of men who still belonged to the age of the " pioneers." 

 The main difficulty in the case of Egyptian was the absence of older 

 texts. The Rosetta Stone belonged to a very late period, and until 

 the active and systematic excavations began in Egypt in the late 

 seventies, under Mariette, followed by the activities of the Egyptian 

 Exploration Fund and of the German government, the texts at the 

 disposal of scholars belonged for the larger part to the later dynasties 

 of Egypt, what is now known as the Middle Kingdom. It was the 

 great achievement of Maspero to have first made accessible the in- 

 scriptions found in the Pyramids at Sakkara — the cemetery of an- 

 cient Memphis — under which the kings of the fifth and sixth dynas- 

 ties lay buried. The Pyramids were opened just at the time that 

 Mariette, the distinguished and indefatigable head of the Bulak 

 Museum, lay on his death-bed. News of the discovery was brought 

 to him by his associate, Heinrich Brugsch, but it was left to Mari- 

 ette's natural successor, the young Maspero, to copy the texts with 

 his own hand and without delay to make them accessible. In the 

 opinion of Egyptologists this achievement at the age of thirty-five 

 remains his greatest work, for although some of his readings have 

 been set aside and some of his interpretations have been superseded 

 by later investigations, the decipherment was eminently successful. 

 Through this feat he laid the foundations for the methodical study 

 of Egyptian grammar on the basis of early and original texts, in- 

 stead of later ones, which were in many cases imperfect copies. 

 This applied more particularly to the great and miscellaneous collec- 

 tion of spells and hymns, conventionally known as the " Book of 

 the Dead," the correct title of which is "The Book of the Going 



